Pelvic Exenteration for Carcinoma of the Cervix

Abstract

DURING the past eighteen years there has been an increasing interest in radical surgery for cancer of the cervix. The rationale for the surgical approach is based on the observation that the natural history of neoplastic disease primary in the uterine cervix is one of local extension rather than distant spread to remote areas of the body. Autopsy studies of untreated patients dying of this disease indicate that the cancer is still confined to the pelvis in 56 per cent of the patients at the time of death.¹ It is therefore logical to attack the problem of cancer localized to . . .